Analysis - Advance Magazine Statistics

About this Analysis

This analysis covers includes all completions that have appeared in Advance! Magazine (US edition only) from 1994, when Advance started printing them, through the middle of 2003, when I did the analysis.

Many, many people have contributed to the statistics project by sending in tallies, completions lists, or old magazines. The contribution page tells more about how you can help. I thank all those who have contributed so far!

since Advance! only started listing completions in 1994, we can't tell
how current stats compare to the boom years of the 80s

The Data

This analysis is based on completions lists from Advance! magazine,
currently the magazine of AOLA (the Advanced Organization of Los Angeles),
formerly the magazine of the Advanced Orgs (there are several worldwide).
(There are other Advance! magazines published in other countries. These
lists were taken from the Los Angeles version only. Where I refer to
Advance below, please remember that I am talking only about the LA
Advance. Other countries' Advance lists will be posted and analyzed as I
get them.)

Advance! magazine has been published since the early 1970s. However,
completion lists did not start appearing until issue 121, published in
1994. Issue 123 does not list completions.

The lack of completions lists from the 1970s and 1980s leaves us with a
very incomplete picture of AOLA's long-term statistics. The long-term
tally of Flag completions from Source
show that Flag
completions peaked in the late 1980s and never recovered. This is likely
to be true for AOLA as well; Clear attests reported in the Auditor also
peaked in the 1980s, making it seem likely that this was a trend that held
true for Scientology throughout the US and possibly the world.

The data is imperfect in other ways. It's unclear whether it includes
completions by staff members; it may be inconsistent, including them
sometimes but not other times. In addition, the data collection is rather
sloppy - there are numerous duplicate entries, names are frequently
misspelled, and the names of services are not always standardized. Since I
have not removed the duplicate entries, these stats are, in fact, slightly
inflated. In addition, some individuals are "retreading" old levels -
people who have attested to upper OT levels are re-attesting to Clear and
lower OT levels, and people are redoing OT Eligibility. Needless to say,
when this happens, it does not indicate that Scientology is growing
(although it probably represents additional income to Scientology).

On the whole, though, I believe the data gives us a much clearer picture
of AOLA than pure speculation and guesswork. I find it most interesting to
know that fewer than 3000 individuals have EVER been listed in Advance
completion lists.

AOLA's OT Stats Are Up

The data speaks for itself here; while annual total completion tallies
have gone up and down over the years, the total for 2002 was way up, and
AOLA looks to be on track for another upstat year.

Total Completions by Year:

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

685

345

1014

923

724

977

733

1028

1714

1101

(2003 is, of course, only half over, as of this writing.)

Based on discussions I've had with Scientologists and conversations I've
read on a.r.s., I believe OT Preps, OT III, and OT V are among the most
important items to watch - OT V partially because it can be so expensive,
often requiring many intensives to complete.

Here are the respective stats by year:

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

OT PREPS

55

40

88

49

69

71

57

92

111

86

OT III

51

18

60

52

47

68

66

69

208

119

OT V

103

22

54

53

50

45

40

49

132

98

(The OT V completions include both OT V and New OT V Audited NOTs.)

Note that AOLA was downstat for years on OT V completions and has only
recently recovered.

OT Eligibility is often redone by Scientologists who pause on their way
through the upper levels. One individual was listed as doing OT
Eligibility five times (far enough apart in time that he appeared to be
redoing the service rather than duplicate entries).

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

OT ELIGIBILITY

51

13

92

89

103

134

69

143

164

105

AOLA's Clear And Sunshine Rundown Stats Are Not Up

Clear and Sunshine Rundown completions may not be as good of an indicator
for an Advanced Org like AOLA, since Clear can be done at many local orgs.
However, it could indicate that AOLA is not serving as many newer members
as in the past, but instead is primarily serving long-time members.

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

CLEAR

18

4

42

31

34

62

44

35

43

26

SUNSHINE RD

16

4

36

31

27

63

43

31

42

26

If AOLA can keep up the trend for 2003, they may manage to beat the
all-time (AOLA) record number of Clear attests from 1999.

Discontinued Services

AOLA has not listed any completions for the following service from
2000-present, although completions were listed in the 1990s:

Fewer Than 3000 Individuals

My database of Advance completions contains 9101 entries. (Each entry is
one individual completing one service in one issue of Advance.)

The simplest name search (exact matches) shows that these 9101 entries
were attributed to 3216 individuals - there are just over 3200 individual
names in the database.

However, many of these are slight variations on the same name: Al Parades
and Al Paredes, or Alex Kreis and Alex Kries. A simple algorithm to remove
probable duplicates (matching the first and last letters of the first and
last names: AlPs for Al Parades) finds only 2603 unique names. However,
that algorithm sometimes misidentifies pairs as duplicates when they're
not. (Were there someone named Amil Peres, it would erroneously match Al
Parades.) My best guess - without personally inspecting each pair - is
that the total number of individuals is approximately 2800. I am therefore
confident in my conservative estimate that there are fewer than 3000
individuals in the list.

In addition, there are 463 exact duplicate entries (same service name with the
exact same spelling), or 237 extraneous entries; using the probable
duplicate algorithm and actually checking each duplicate found raises the
number to 534 actual duplicate entries, for 273 extraneous entries (some
are actually triplicates). Some of these duplicates are retreads, and some
are truly duplicates. As I refine my database, I will probably revise the
data to exclude the duplicates. For now, the data is slightly inflated.

Additional Discussion

So, there you have it. I'm sure sharper eyes and more knowledgeable minds
than mine will find lots of interesting observations.

I think it's worth reviewing the EXCELLENT thread at Google as well as other commentary on Scientology stat trends. As Warrior has
pointed out in a different thread, just because completion stats appear to
be up, it doesn't mean overall stats are up. How's the GI? How's the
Bodies in the Shop? How's the New Starts? Only a few Scientology
executives know the answers to those questions.

I'd like to thank Warrior for all his invaluable thoughts about
completions stats and trends in general, and Cerridwen, Lulu Belle,
ladayla, and Deomorto for their excellent and thought-provoking
contributions to the earlier discussion of these stats in August 2002 (URL
above).

I also extend huge thanks to Cerridwen, who has contributed so much data
to the database, and all those kind souls who have made data from
magazines available to me. You know who you are (even if I don't!).